Enthusiasms and expostulations, by Glenn Kenny

December 06, 2013

My favorite film of 2013

...is Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis. Granted, I'm seeing Wolf of Wall Street this afternoon, but even if I love Martin Scorsese's new picture, it will probably not knock Davis out of my heart's top spot, because, well, I might as well just admit it, I feel an abiding/irritating kinship with the cranky folk singer of the Coen picture. I reviewed it for RogerEbert.com, and I'll write more about its magnificent knottiness once more potential readers have seen the movie. All I'm going to say to you is that you have to see it from the very beginning. It's not even an opening credit thing. If you're three minutes late, even, you're lost.

But go, and see. It's awesome. My friend Michelle Dean has a nice piece at Flavorwire taking issue with the movie's naysayers and putting her finger on some of the reasons it resonates so naggingly with folks like herself and myself.

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For those of us not conversant with the Scene In Question, any particularly critical prep work to do in order to recognize the full blossom of that knottiness? I can garble the lyrics to 20 different Bob Dylan songs, but I'm guessing that's probably not sufficient.

Thank you for the excellent Dean review (and your own, as well). Why hasn't this notion of "the Coens as sadists" died yet? Yes, sometimes they are satirists, depicting cruel outcomes as punishment for hubris, or sanely pointing out the Ecclesiastes-inspired message of No Country ("all is vanity"), but this isn't exactly children burning ants to death with a magnifying glass. There are philosophical and/or dramatic reasons why many of their characters end up where they do. And they're not sadists to the audience. In other words, Larry Gopnick might suffer, but I have gotten a lot of comfort and wisdom from A Serious Man.

Oh my, that Hoberman piece that Dean links to. I mean, just look at this:

"Turturro starred as another sort of Jew in Barton Fink, which, set in 1941, staged a virtual death match between two then potent stereotypes—the vulgar Hollywood mogul and the arty New York communist—without any hint that their minstrel show battle royale was occurring at the acme of worldwide anti-Semitism. That might have ruined the joke."

This is one of those "did he actually WATCH the movie" review lines that I most readily associate with Armond White. Distressing to see a critical blind spot that big in Hoberman.

"This is one of those "did he actually WATCH the movie" review lines that I most readily associate with Armond White. Distressing to see a critical blind spot that big in Hoberman."

OTOH, The Brothers Coen really do regularly traffic in unflattering Jewish stereotypes. As a Member Of The Tribe myself, I find absolutely nothing objectionable in their doing so. But J., wrongheaded as he may be on this count, isn't just conjuring up something out of nothing.

If Hoberman limited his critique to that, I wouldn't think twice about it. But to claim that BARTON FINK contains nary a "hint" of WWII or the Holocaust isn't just to miss subtext, it's to have your eyes closed and your ears plugged for pretty much the last 15 minutes of the movie. It's demonstrably wrong.

Mark: Indeed he does, but at least ILD made the list, which I would never have predicted from his initial Cannes report. Evidently some major reconsideration has taken place in the last 6 months or so:

C'mon, Gleiberman said it's one of the 10 best movies of the year. So what if he ranked World War Z ahead of it? It's not like he did an Armond White-style comparison in which he used some crazy interpretation of World War Z to show how horrible and phony ILD is.

Noam - Found "American Astronaut" on Netflix and took it in over the weekend. I think it's safe to say that the film wouldn't work at all but for the inventive cinematography. It's a shame that the pacing and acting is so hit and miss because there's the kernel of a genuinely engaging film, if still a bit bizarre. Instead, it remains an occasionally entertaining curiosity. Glad I saw it, though. Thanks for the tip!